A fable (Condi and the Spanish elections)

Once upon a time, a boy was walking down the street hitting power poles with a stick. He hit one in particular and every light in NY city (and most of the Eastern Seaboard) went out. The boy, terrified, ran home to confess to his mother. Actually, his actions had nothing to do with it. The Great Eastern Power Failure was caused by a bad conductor in Niagara Falls. (actually, this is a true story)

Once upon a time, bad men blew up a train in Spain so the people elected a Liberal government so the big bad conservatives wouldn't get re-elected and piss off Osama bin Laden.

At least that's the story Condi's telling.

If we can prove that the conservative Spanish government was not going to be re-elected for reasons having nothing to do with the train attacks, then we can show that Condi's talking lies when she says that the attacks affected the election.

Let me break that down a bit.

I'm looking for a logical fallacy just like the little boy's when he assumed that his actions caused the blackout.

So let's look at the premises.

1. The conservative government would be re-elected.
2. The attacks caused people to vote liberal.

Therefore, the attacks changed the outcome.

So, let's challenge the premises.

The way to do this is polling data from before the train attacks.

If the polls said that the conservatives were a shoe-in, this if faintly believable. I don't remember one way or the other. But if it was predicted the liberals would win, or it was too close to call, the story loses ground.

The second premise makes less sense. People in times of conflict tend to vote conservative. If you buy into the mantra that Spain's military contrabution was doing any sort of good, this would make no sense whatsoever, because the liberal candidate made pulling the troops a plank in his platform - and he's now implemented it. And Spain's 1500 troops are a drop in the bucket compared the number of US forces on the ground. I certainly don't remember any reports containing "fierce fighting" and "Spanish troops" in the same breath.

The question is, would the Spanish electorate think that it would make any difference. Again, we would need the polling data.

Anybody here read Spanish?

The pre-election polling showed an erosion of grassroots support for the war effort (sound familiar?). Not sure what it was right before the bombing - but the trend was in place.

I will let our Spanish members weigh in before I try to sound like an authority. I was in South America at the time so I was actually getting some informative news on TV.

fucked out whatever fixing Aznar people had in place. This is the only moral of the story - as far as I am concerned:
TURNOUT TRUMPS DIEBOLD